


Competence of Life

by OldShrewsburyian



Category: Henry IV - Shakespeare, Henry IV Part 1 - Shakespeare, Henry IV Part 2 - Shakespeare, Henry V - Shakespeare
Genre: (should go without saying really), Angst, Dialogue Heavy, Emotional Baggage, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, England (Country), Gen, Henry-centric, Historical References, Medieval Medicine, Nightmares, Post-Canon Fix-It, Queer Gen, Religious Content, Shippy Gen, Somebody Lives/Not Everyone Dies, Wine
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-19
Updated: 2017-08-19
Packaged: 2018-12-17 08:31:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 4,096
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11847828
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OldShrewsburyian/pseuds/OldShrewsburyian
Summary: For the prompt: "Hal returns home from France alive au, Ned Poins and Hal meet again, preferably with an apology on Hal's part."Set in the summer of 1422, after the French campaign which, in this version of events, Henry survives... just. As after the campaign of 1415, he decides to make a pilgrimage, but the circumstances are different, and so is he.





	1. Prologue: The Ship

**Author's Note:**

  * For [MontagueBitch (porcia_catonis)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/porcia_catonis/gifts).



The Holigost is docked at Dover, returned at last from the wars. Inside her great cabin, a fierce and private combat rages.

“Your Grace,” says Thomas Rodbourne, “consider.”

“I have considered,” says the pale man on the bed. “You taught me the laws of probability; you might have a little respect for the quality of your own instruction.” 

The cleric stands unhappy and unappeased. Having been both Chancellor of Oxford University, and a chaplain in the field, he is not abashed by the august company in which he finds himself. “Your Grace,” he says again, and there is a note of pleading in his voice, “let me plan a public procession. Your pilgrimage to Holywell was well-received; it is still talked of; let me — ” 

“Agincourt was a victory,” says the king, “and thanks were due for it.” The contrast hangs unspoken in the air. 

The Duke of Bedford scratches his scalp thoughtfully. “And so the ship is to lie in harbor, and you remain unseen?”

“’Tis but a day’s journey, John. Let them think we have matters to discuss, that hold me here.”

“And so we do!”

“I say to you now, ‘Well done,’ and there’s an end.”

The keen, scholarly face of the Duke of Gloucester is no less troubled than that of his elder brother. “Harry,” he says quietly, “bethink you. Your health is not — ”

“Equal to a day’s walk in fine weather? Ask Colnet.” The physician, a small, fair man, nearly drops the flask he is holding. “What say you, Nicholas Colnet?”

“I should be better content,” answers the physician, “if your regimen were better established, after the rigors of the field. If your Highness’ fever were not so persistent, if — ”

“Enough!” The king does not raise his voice, but the other four in the cabin shift their weight, as if bracing for the onslaught of his displeasure. “Tell me the motto over this door.” 

“Une sanz pluis,” says Bedford softly, to break the tense silence. 

“So! And am I not king of England?” In the flickering smile there is something of self-mockery. “And France?” 

“Your Grace,” says Gloucester, “we speak of the tender love we bear you.”

The man on the bed reaches to clasp his brother’s hand. “Humphrey,” says the king, “I know it. I shall guard myself as you, my friends, would wish. And I shall go.” It is a dismissal, and is taken as such.


	2. The Road

Leaving the ship is no hard matter, in the end. What is a king, compared to the pay for months’ campaigning, and the permission to be free of it? Walking disguised, he goes un-accosted. He walks in the light of day, and is not betrayed by it. He resists the urge to stretch himself above-decks, to stand with his face upturned to the sun. He himself must not risk becoming a thing towards which men’s heads are turned. 

For the first while, he wonders whether cities are louder than war. He shuffles through Priory Gate, adapts the swinging gait of seaboard survival to Castle Street and the market square. By the time he’s emerged from the square — with rolls and cheese for his scrip — he’s decided that what deafens him is the multiplicity of purposes, jostling together as insistently as the people. At war, the unbearable din is wordless, and the sole objective of every man to survive.

He breathes more easily once he is beyond the walls, passing the almshouses with their gardens. He throws a coin to the lepers at the crossroads before striking out to join the path of the Dour. The river’s placid, high-summer voice says only “Hush, hush.” Birds call to each other, a half-forgotten sound. He marks the freckled cowslip, burnet, and green clover. Not far off, men and women call to each other; softly, sheep bleat. He pauses more often than is his wont, thinking of poor, solicitous Colnet.

He cuts through the fields, where the reapers are singing amid the grain: “Merry it is while summer it lasts…” He cannot afterwards precisely recall the moments between thinking he might rest under a spreading oak, and finding himself beneath it, collapsed gratefully against the warm earth, the song of the reapers and the whisper of the leaves blending until they are swallowed by sudden silence.

He is awakened by a voice — or by a presence; one of them.

“With you anon, Alice!” He is somehow certain that the woman with the jug who stands before him had been regarding him an instant before. He wonders if her promise of _anon_ is primarily for Alice’s benefit or for his. Alice calls back; he cannot distinguish the words.

He has raised himself to sit with his back against the tree by the time the woman meets his gaze, frankly and boldly. 

“God greet you,” says the woman, and, to his surprise, kneels beside him and passes him the jug.

“God reward you.” He takes the jug from her, but does not drink.

“Go on,” says she. She seems amused by his hesitation. “For the love of Christ, man — we’ll pour ourselves more ale when we dine anon.”

He salutes her, and drinks deep; such an offer is not to be refused in the August heat. He hands the jug back to her, and she drinks in turn, settling herself on her haunches. 

“You’ve been in the king’s wars,” she says after a few moments.

“Yes.”

“And are going home now?”

He shakes his head. “We’ve just docked. They — the others will be home soon.”

“But you won’t.” He closes his eyes, shakes his head again. “God forgive me if I think to gossip,” says his generous interlocutor, “but — ” At the touch of her hand on his arm, he flinches into alertness. “You looked tired, is all,” says the woman. He could almost think her eyes bright with tears. He wonders if he frightened her, pulling away too suddenly, too like a soldier.

“I’m bound for Canterbury,” he says. “Tell me your name, and I’ll pray for you there — ”

“Joan,” says the woman.

“Joan.” He swallows. “Thank you, Joan.”

“You needn’t thank me.” She pauses, expectant.

“Harry,” he says after a moment.

“God keep you, Harry,” says Joan, and rises. “Coming, Alice!”

“Thank you, Joan,” says the king softly to her retreating back.

He sits and watches the sunlight slipping between the leaves until he can be fairly sure of not catching the women up. Rising, he finds himself more stiff than he expected to be, but forces himself to stride on, stretching his legs, striking out to join the Canterbury Road.

\+ + +

He returns the greetings given him on the great road, but walks with his head lowered, his stride unchanging. Why he fears recognition he does not quite know — so few have seen the king of England. Yet echoes still his father’s sneering jibe: _For thou hast lost thy princely privilege with vile participation._. Well. Yet here he is, among his people, and besmirched with nothing more than dust.

It is the shout that interrupts his thoughts, even before the dog.

“Fang!” calls a boyish treble. “Fang! Back! Here!” A black-and-white mongrel buries its nose momentarily against his knee, before twining around his legs with manifest pleasure. It then begins to race between its young master and Henry, apparently bent on narrowing the distance between them. 

“We were driving the sheep,” says the boy, as though it explains everything. “He’s young yet,” he adds, with the indulgent tone of a veteran. “He’ll learn.”

Henry schools his face into seriousness. “I’m sure he will.” 

“He likes you,” adds the boy. This pronouncement is superfluous, as Fang is insistently jostling the majesty of England with his head, demanding to be scratched behind the ears.

“It shows he’s used to kindness. He’s none so fearsome, for a dog named Fang.”

“No.” The boy sighs gustily. “But I think my dad thought it would make thieves nervous.”

“Not a bad idea.” 

“It doesn’t work like that, though.”

“What doesn’t?”

“Naming people. Or dogs. I’m Michael, because of being born on his feast day, but it’s my brother who’s the fighter. His name’s Stephen, and Stephen was a very dull saint.”

“He fought his battles differently,” says the king quietly; Michael does not dignify the remark with a response. 

“It’s a good job that sheep are stupider than dogs,” continues Michael, pursuing some line of his own. “I think Fang only herds them because we ask him to. Are you abroad on business?” he adds.

The king shakes his head. “I have been long a soldier.” His silence lasts for several paces; then: “But I must find new occupation now.”

“My eldest brother — that’s Stephen — was in the wars, at Agincourt. He has a great scar all down his arm.” Michael traces the line of it on his own skin. The king cannot repress a shudder. “He’ll show it off sometimes in the winter, if we ask for the story.”

“Will he?”

“Oh, yes! He got it blocking a blow to his head and he always says it’s a good thing he did or else he would have had a great scar on his face and Jenny wouldn’t have married him — oh!” 

Harry glances sideways to find the boy staring at him, wide-eyed. He is blushing and biting his lip, the tips of his ears scarlet. Fang trots unconcerned between them. The king resists the temptation to say any of several things that are not quite true.

“And what,” he asks, “does Jenny say?” This seems to be an adequate response, as Michael exhales in open relief. 

“ _She_ says she’d have married him anyway, as long as he kept that thick skull of his whole.” Michael grins, clearly satisfied by this ritual exchange, and by his own ability to report it accurately.

“That’s good.”

“Yes,” says Michael simply; “it is.” They walk on together in companionable silence.


	3. The Hospital

The evening star seems to grow brighter with every step as he approaches Canterbury. He debates seeking hospitality at the house of St. Augustine. They will have finished Vespers, or nearly. But he passes the gate without turning; he has spent too many nights camped outside city walls.

He loves the sky in England. He had forgotten this — the sweet expanse of it, the colors impossible to name, as various as the greens in the hedgerows. The cathedral, visible for miles, begins to be swallowed up by the city as he approaches. The number of folk on the road seems to increase as they are crowded towards the gate. Carters exchange insults, some of them in jest. He does not pass unremarked — he finds more than one stranger staring at the scar — but none accosts him. 

The streets are too narrow for the numbers crowding them, but the hogsheads are delivered to taverns, and beasts to butchers, and men and women to their homes. Shopkeepers are beginning to close their shutters. The king of England watches, and thinks of the safe rooms behind and above these shops, filling with the smell of food, with laughter, with the ease that comes of a household’s long familiarity. He thinks of the Boar’s Head, and tries not to. 

He has to duck his head beneath the lintel of the pilgrims’ hospital at Eastbridge. The chapel is overflowing into the entryway, a mass of kneeling backs, worn sandals. 

“Ah, brother.” The man in the habit is his own age, with kind eyes and a harried expression. Harry wonders briefly what it would be like to live a life that allowed such kindness, such quick trust.

“As you can see,” says the lay brother, “we’re more than full. We’ll have some sleeping in the chapel.” He seems quite cheerful about it. “You’ll be most welcome with the grey friars, just up the road…” He gestures vaguely around the corner of the doorway. “But if there’s anything you need that I can give — ”

He smiles. “No, I thank you. God be with you.”

“And with you, _benedicite_.”

Stepping back into the road, he finds himself suddenly and inordinately tired. At least pilgrims, like soldiers, sleep early. The road leading to the Franciscan house is unexpectedly quiet, curving away almost under the city walls, as if creating even here a refuge from the world without. _Pax multa in cella, foris autem plurima bella._

He does not have to knock at the door. He steps over the threshold, and finds himself in a garden. The brothers’ enclosure is beyond the wall, peace within peace, and a discipline not enjoined here. The warmth of the day lingers in the stones.

“They’ll pour you a cup of ale, within,” says a fellow-pilgrim, glancing up at him. The man is weathered and lean, but his face is tranquil. The king looks at the badges on the man’s hat, and wonders at the time before his tranquility. 

“I thank you,” he says aloud. The words are a heavy litany in his mouth, the repeated confession of a man to whom nothing is owed and much is given.

He is given the ale and a welcome by a friar who calls him “son,” by a man who resembles his father in no particular except that of age. And not even that… he finds he cannot imagine his father having survived to such a wealth of years, aged only by winters and not by battles, his voice soft, his manner gentle.

The guesthouse stands by a stream that runs in its course as peacefully as the life of the friars. Many pilgrims have worn a path down its bank, and Harry follows it for the reason of its making: the desire to bathe weary feet.

He settles himself on the stream’s edge, grateful for the shade and the quiet and the cool water to soothe hot blood.

“You’ve been in the king’s wars.” He closes his eyes; it is an unwelcome greeting. But perhaps it is only fitting that he should be so instantly recognizable as a soldier, if nothing else. Since the days of Cain, men have been marked by their sin.

He moves over to make room for his fellow-pilgrim, a straw-haired bear of a man. “I have,” says he briefly. “And in those of the old king too.”

“Ah!” The man does not pause on the bank, but wades into the water and proceeds to strip to the waist. “I followed the army at Monmouth,” says he. “But never no more.” 

Henry cannot find it in his heart to blame the man. Monmouth had been a shambles, and survival its only victory. 

“It seems,” continues the man, thrashing his shirt in the water, “that they have no other thought in their heads, these kings, than the spilling of other men’s blood.”

Other men’s blood, great God! True, there was enough of that, and surfeit. Harry bites the inside of his lip. _Have you seen a sick old man strapped into his armor, because he is the king? Have you known what it is to plan your every utterance? Have you a thought of what it is to be the king when you are starving, or sick even to death?_

The man seems to expect no response. “They were better,” says he, “to bide at home, and mind their true subjects.”

“Like ourselves.”

“Like ourselves,” agrees the burly fellow. “I’m a smith now. Training an apprentice — a clumsy fellow, God save the mark — like to have blinded me last winter.” He gestures to a white scar next to his eye. “But I prayed to our lord Thomas of Canterbury.”

“God be thanked,” says the king dutifully. 

“And you?”

For a moment he is at a loss. “I am but lately recovered from an illness.”

“Ah,” says the man again. “This is the reward of campaigning, and yet it seems the young king has done little else.”

“And now he must craft a peace he did not expect to see,” says Harry softly.

“What?”

“I was only thinking that the work of forging peace is a harder thing than the waging of war.”

“Aye, marry, is it! And the great men make wars enough for themselves, and leave the lesser folk to make the peace.” The man spits expressively. Henry bows his head, and presses his palms against the earth to hide their trembling. 

He is glad when the man lumbers up the bank again, and is careful to avoid him at supper.

\+ + +

He is fighting with demons. “Thou liest!” One has him by the foot. “Thou liest!” They have wrapped his chest in chains. “My portion is with the Lord Jesus Christ!” He cannot reach to cross himself; their claws are digging into his shoulders and he cannot beat them off. He is surrounded by the groans of his fellow sinners.

“Be quiet!” It is an unlikely cry in Hell. He opens his eyes. 

“Ned!” He shuts his eyes again, attempting to banish the transmuted nightmare. Perhaps that is what Hell is — the ghosts of men he has sinned against. He listens to his own ragged breathing, the muttered curses from nearby beds. The camp? No, Canterbury. He dares to open his eyes. The saturnine face above him is still the same, and he gapes at it, his mouth dry. The strange-familiar figure squeezes his shoulders.

“Get up, Hal.”

As one still in a dream, he obeys. The man is, of course, a friar, but God! his face… and he addressed him by name. He leads him to the west door of the guesthouse, pausing to take a pitcher from a niche. Wordlessly he hands Henry two bowls. Together they pass into the garden, into the clear moonlight of late summer.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> St. Thomas of Canterbury was particularly known as a healer of eye ailments.
> 
> Monmouth was/is, of course, treated as a landmark achievement in Prince Hal's military career, but I represent him here as a man who does not believe his own propaganda.


	4. The Garden

“Ned.” It is a breath of wonder; the Franciscan’s habit is not such a disguise that it can make that face and form other than they are. The look of suppressed mischief, of one waiting for a slower-witted man to catch up with him, is unchanged. “What in God’s name are you doing here?”

The friar who is Ned laughs soundlessly, teeth bared, and Henry shivers. “His Grace the king of England comes to Canterbury alone, unguarded, as an anonymous pilgrim, and asks me what I am doing here.”

“You vanished from the world, Ned.” It seems like stating the obvious, looking at the man in his friar’s garb, and yet it remains an astonishment. “A better man might have stayed with me for friendship; a worse would have stayed for gain, and you — you left.”

“And you never thought to find me here, my interest in Canterbury pilgrims being of a different sort?”

“I did not say so.”

There is an uneasy silence. “I’d say ‘Ask, and shalt have’; but you’ve put such things behind you.”

“I have,” agrees Ned. The night is soft around them, the city distant outside the garden walls; it is easy, here, to believe in the friary as a peaceful, self-enclosed world. To Harry’s profound relief, Ned takes and fills the bowls. Wordlessly they pledge each other; he drinks — and finds it wine, cool and sweet.

“Yet you knew me again,” says Poins softly, “for all that.”

“God defend that it should be otherwise.” He holds his breath, but Ned makes no mocking reply. “I took your departure for granted.” He waits for Ned to say, _You took my presence for granted,_ but he does not. 

“You never belonged to that world,” adds Henry.

“No more did you.”

“No.” Above them, a nightingale sings of longing, unfulfilled. “I belonged nowhere.”

“And you never thought that might be true for others?” Beneath Ned’s anger he braces himself. “We wandered between worlds together, and you never — you never deigned to treat me as your equal. No.” He forestalls Henry’s protest. “No; for you kept your own counsels alone, your burdens and sorrows nothing to be shared, and those of others… did you think of them? I know not.” He can hear Ned’s breath, quickly drawn. “We might have helped each other. We might have consoled — ”

“Ned.” He raises himself on one arm, reaches to touch his friend’s sleeve. “Ned, I am sorry.” Poins is silent, staring straight ahead into the darkness. “I was too much the king, and not enough.” He swallows. “I called you friend, and should more truly have deserved the title at your hands. I am sorry, Ned. I beg your pardon.”

The night around them seems, of a sudden, unbearably still. “All right,” says Ned at last; Henry knows that is all the forgiveness he can expect. He lies back against the earth.

“You don’t look well, Hal,” says Ned softly into the silence.

“Mm.” 

“For how long?”

“Since April.” There is a restless rustling beside him. He suspects Ned is resisting the impulse to shake him. “I almost died,” he admits. “The doctors say that’s a turning point.”

“God buy you,” says Ned, in a tone that means _damn you_. “What is it?”

Henry scrubs his hands over his face. “Tertian fever. Flux. It has many names. A French physician claimed I might have leprosy. Ah!” Ned has punched him in the shoulder, and before he has time to think, his hand is almost at his friend’s throat. To his surprise, Poins — though he has unlearned some of his former skill in such matters — is striking him with open palms, clumsily and passionately, then pinching him. He does not trust himself to retaliate. But then Ned is running his hands from shoulder to wrist, with something like tenderness, and Hal reaches quicker than thought, to prison his friend’s hands. Ned’s face is a hand’s-breadth from his own, and his breathing is ragged.

“There,” says Ned. “You feel pain, and your breath comes sweetly. You don’t have leprosy.”

“Thanks.” He is released, and, careful not to move hesitatingly or as if in pain, he sits up. Another silence would be dangerous, on this warm night, with their blood up. “Tell me about the garden, Ned.”

“Wormwood,” rejoins Ned, without preamble. “Used for aged joints and paralysis, in ointments or in baths. Blessed thistle -- cleans infected wounds. Foxglove, for old sores or new hurts. That’s our all-herbs bed. You can make a paste of those for poultices, or dilute it in wine. It cleans and nourishes.” Henry leans against his friend’s familiar shoulder, clad in its unfamiliar cloth. “The vine is bitter apple — Brother Andrew brought it from his pilgrimage — it heals inflamed wounds… and, I am told, is effective against werewolves. That pretty purple thing is self-heal.” He jerks upright again, as if Ned had uttered an accusation, a reproach. 

“That in the corner, with the yellow flowers, is herb-of-grace.” Ned tangles his fingers in his friend’s hair, pulling, probing, caressing, drawing him back against him. “That tall one is feverfew.”

“For fevers?”

“Clever fellow,” drawls Ned. “Also good for headaches… which you still get, I daresay.”

“Mm.” It is a low, satisfied noise. “You’ve become quite wise in such matters.”

“Indeed. Not a useless idler after all.”

“You were never only that — and I have cause to know it.”

“My humble thanks to my most gracious lord.” Ned’s inflection is ironical, but there is, Harry thinks, true warmth beneath it.

“Those,” says Ned after a few moments, “are good for fertility.”

“And the _friars_ keep them?”

“We help all who come,” says Ned sententiously. 

Henry chuckles. “I’ve got a son; did you know?”

Ned snatches his wine bowl and makes a great show of peering into it before refilling it. “You’re drunk, you fool. All England knows you have a son.”

He toasts his friend with a rueful smile. “Well. Your good health, Ned.”

Ned holds his eyes. “Not for the realm’s sake, not the king’s health that is drunk all along the coast this night — yours, Hal.”

They drink in silence; Harry does not trust himself to speak.

“The wine, by the by, is medicinal,” observes Ned presently.

“ _You’re_ drunk.”

“No, in good faith! It is a light Rhenish wine, well-blended with herbs, and with sugar to sweeten it, approved for the cooling of the blood and the relief of apoplexy and fever. And leprosy, which you do not have.”

He contemplates the contents of his wine bowl. “Sack and sugar, Ned?”

Ned is silent a moment, and then laughs, a spluttering, genuine, heart-easing laugh. “You scapegrace, Harry of England. You rogue. You — ” He breaks off. “My good sweet honey lord,” says Ned, and stops again, self-silenced. Around them sing the crickets, tender as birds.

“I’ve seen you again, Ned,” says the king. “That must be grace enough.”

**Author's Note:**

> Full disclosure: I am a historian and I have many feelings about both Historical!Henry V and Shakespeare!Henry V, so this reflects that. I also have a lot of feelings about medieval cultures of pilgrimage and medieval experiences of physical disfigurement, so... this reflects that as well. Rodbourne and Colnet are both historical figures who were on campaign with Henry. 
> 
> The reference to leprosy, incidentally, comes from a single blog post that claims Henry's final illness is "often" presumed to be leprosy, and I just have no idea how they got to that claim. Leprosy is not the kind of thing that was mistaken for any of the other diseases Henry might have died of. So I worked it into the story.
> 
> Ned is a friar because I became haunted by the fact that, like Lear's Fool, he's one of the Shakespeare characters who simply... drops out of the play's world. So I thought about what that might look like (not that it fully answers questions of why and when and how!)


End file.
